


a daughter's love

by anathebookworm



Category: Nancy Drew (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Major Character Ressurection, Major character death - Freeform, Nancy and her two dads, Season 2 Episode 5 AU, Suicidal Thoughts, is that even a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29816034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anathebookworm/pseuds/anathebookworm
Summary: His heart shattered into a million pieces—if it was even possible for a broken heart to break yet again—when Nancy's head gently turned to the side and she forced a smile upon seeing him.One of her bloody hands went up, and she touched his cheek delicately."Dad," Nancy whispered, coughed along with the blood that wouldn't stop flowing past her lips.Then her head rolled to the side again, slower this time, and her other hand went to Ryan's face."Dad," Nancy repeated, using the very last bit of her strength to tell them she loved both the only way she still could.
Relationships: Carson Drew & Nancy Drew, Carson Drew & Ryan Hudson, Nancy Drew & Ryan Hudson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	a daughter's love

**Author's Note:**

> this is a little shorter than what I usually write, but maaaybe that means there's more coming... sometime... who knows...

They were going to die.

They _were_ going to be horribly, brutally murdered in a few hours.

For a fleeting moment, Nancy wondered if such a violent death—along with her million unfinished businesses—would be enough to keep her in Horseshoe Bay for a while. It was a real possibility, because it seemed to her that half of the people who lived in this town were ghosts, poltergeists, or whatever.

 _Maybe_ , Nancy suddenly thought, _that would mean she would get to hang out with Lucy. Or even Odette, the real Odette._

The strange thought made her chest constrict painfully. She was in no hurry to meet with Odette, absolutely not, but Lucy…

 _No_ , she told herself firmly. _No, that wasn't going to happen today. She would fix everything. She could do this._

 _And what better place to start_ , Nancy mused, _than the Historical Society?_

It was worth a shot, either way. And really, she was desperate. Anything would be worth a shot at this point.

* * *

_All things considered_ , Ryan thought as he waited inside his car with Carson, _this was a bad idea._

No matter how little he knew about Nancy, he was sure that spying on her was absolutely not their greatest idea. If anything, he thought that this might be just the final push she needed, just the thing she was looking for to finally have a reason to cut ties with both of them.

The thought was unpleasant to the point it made his stomach painfully twist in itself. He already had his mouth open, ready to ask Carson whether this was a normal side effect of parenting that no one bothered to tell him about, when something caught his eye and his thoughts came to a halt.

No, not something.

It was Nancy.

And she looked—as distressed as Ryan was sure both him and Carson felt?

Carson noticed their daughter approaching as well, of course. Just like he noticed her frantic expression almost immediately.

"This doesn't look good," Ryan whispered, almost to himself. "She doesn't get that upset because of a case, does she?"

"No, I…" Carson paused to take in a deep breath. "I don't think I've ever seen Nancy looking like this before."

"We should talk to her."

As soon as the words left Ryan's mouth, he experienced one of the strangest moments of his life. Carson frowned, his expression clearly saying, _"She'll hate it if we do."_

 _"We're already spying on her, remember?"_ Ryan silently communicated back, raising one eyebrow. He was sure the other man understood it too, despite how strange it all was.

Then, Carson's eyes cleared. _"Nancy needs us, she needs us right now,"_ they were saying.

Ryan nodded. _"Let's go then."_

No words were spoken out loud, but they both exited the car at the same time, their eyes focused on Nancy and Nancy alone.

Ryan already had a thousand excuses ready to leap from his mouth the second Nancy turned her accusing glare in their direction, the one she seemed so fond of when interacting with them, and he was sure Carson had his own arsenal of excuses and apologies.

And yet, the moment Nancy saw them, recognition coloring her eyes, she surprised them both.

 _Something is clearly wrong_ , was all Ryan had the time to think before Nancy grabbed them both by the arms, hauling them around like she was the adult and they were the teenagers. There was no glare in her eyes, only despair.

It was only when they were safely away from prying eyes that she sighed and asked, "What are you doing?"

"We were worried," Ryan said immediately, his hands flying up.

"You don't look good, Nancy," Carson added, his voice soft and pleading.

But Nancy, oh, Nancy was made of stone and steel and whatever else one could find inside the Hudsons. She didn't even blink at their concern, didn't seem to acknowledge it at all.

Either she was colder than Ryan had imagined, or something was so very wrong that her brain simply couldn't shift its focus to them.

Considering what they had witnessed just now, her visible despair, and her erratic behavior the past few days, Ryan was willing to bet something awful either had happened or would happen soon.

But pushing her now, asking for answers, that would only drive her away, wouldn't it?

"At least let us help?" He asked after a moment, trying to keep the pleading look out of his eyes. That wouldn't do them any good.

"I have to go to the Historical Society," Nancy said, yielding at least this bit of information. "I don't really have much time."

Carson opened a tentative smile and said, "We'll just tag along, Nance. Just stay nearby in case you need something. If that's alright?"

It seemed like hours had passed before Nancy sighed, her shoulders looking heavy, and said, "Fine."

It was a much bigger win than Ryan had ever anticipated getting.

_Something was clearly wrong._

* * *

"I'll try to talk to her. If I get anything, I'll call you," Carson promised later in the day, before they parted ways.

After their detour at the Historical Society and after Nancy raided his vacuum, Ryan was left feeling… strange.

It would be a lie if he said he had visited the Historical Society before—or had his car vacuum simply taken away by a teenager that didn't even acknowledge how weird that was, really—but Ryan could say with one hundred percent certainty that, if he had stopped to consider it before, what they found in that building was certainly not something that he would have ever expected.

And yet, he had seen it. He had been standing right on Nancy's right side while Carson distracted the caretaker. He had been there, had seen the book of records Nancy opened with his eyes. He had read the contents, and even if he hadn't, he certainly heard Nancy's surprised mutterings.

He couldn't stop the words _a shroud that can revive the dead_ from repeating themselves over and over again inside his mind.

Was such a thing possible? It seemed ridiculous, but Nancy didn't look like someone who found the idea ridiculous. She seemed to take that thing—along with all other strange, apparently cursed objects in that place—very seriously.

And so, Ryan kept asking himself, _Was it possible? Could it be?_

He wanted to visit Lucy at her new grave, wanted to ask her if maybe, just maybe, she could give him permission to try something insane like that.

He had been frightened by her appearance a few times, certainly, but that one time at the Masque, when he saw her for who she was, when he briefly had Lucy back, it was enough to fuel Ryan with a strange hope he hadn't felt in years.

And, well, his life just kept getting stranger and stranger. He could roll with it. And if there was a chance to have Lucy by his side again, alive and well, then why not try?

 _Maybe,_ he thought, _this could prove to be exactly what Nancy needed too. Maybe having Lucy here, actively supporting her in a way he didn't know how, would help her feel better about whatever was happening._

Ryan had made up his mind by then, certain that the pros far outweighed the cons, when his phone rang.

It was—Ned Nickerson?

* * *

Carson knew it was wrong.

He knew, he understood that Nancy would hate him for it—especially now, after their heart-to-heart, after a brief moment of connecting to each other again—but he couldn't stand still.

He waited for thirty minutes inside his office after Nancy had abruptly left, and when the hour was almost up, he couldn't take it anymore. So Carson did what he had to do: he gathered his stuff and drove to The Claw, where he hoped Nancy would be. After getting closer with her friends, she started spending a lot more time there. It was worth a shot.

He didn't like following her, but he had to do this. His heart was aching, so much it was a physical pain now, and he knew deep down that it was because he was worried about her.

The moment he made it to The Claw and found Ryan parking his car, looking equal amounts disturbed and distraught, Carson knew he wasn't imagining things. He wasn't crazy. Whatever it was, Ryan must have felt it too, even from a distance.

Which only seemed to fuel his anxiety, his frantic thoughts that Nancy must be in trouble if both of them felt the need to come here at the exact same time.

As soon as Ryan was out of his car and noticed Carson, he took quick strides, one of his hands waving something in the air.

"Ned Nickerson just gave this to me," Ryan started immediately, showing Carson a flash drive. "He said—he said I would want to use this to bring the Hudsons down tomorrow. Because of Nancy. Tomorrow, specifically."

Carson nodded, his thoughts growing even more desperate. "Nancy came to see me just now, said she loved me," he said then.

For a second, Carson saw pain flash in Ryan's eyes at the declaration. But it was quickly gone, vanished altogether from his face a second later.

Because someone was screaming.

Someone, inside The Claw, was screaming.

He didn't think before he moved, neither of them did, because if they had, Carson knew they would both have realized that whoever was screaming, it didn't sound like Nancy. It didn't sound like any of her friends. It didn't even sound human.

And there was a good reason for that, Carson found out, because the moment they made it inside the diner, they saw it.

"Jesus fucking shit," Ryan screamed, his feet slipping on the dirty ground. He made contact with the floor almost immediately, landing near Nancy on the floor, though he never moved his stare away from the thing in the center of the room.

Carson was confused, scared, possibly _scarred_ , but he didn't let that stop him. There was something inside The Claw, something ugly and big and clearly malevolent, and Nancy and her friends were all scattered on the floor, their ears bleeding.

It was hard not to slip and fall like Ryan had done, but Carson managed to make it to his daughter's and her other father's sides just before the creature, the monster, whatever it was, started screaming again.

"No!" Nancy yelled the moment she saw them both, though Carson couldn't tell if she was angry or worried. " _No!_ What are you doing here? No!"

The monster moved closer to Nancy at that, it's grotesque mouth opening even wider. Carson didn't have to think about it, didn't really have any time to consider it, before he put himself between the monster and Nancy and Ryan.

It turned out to have been useless, really, because the thing threw him away effortlessly with another piercing scream.

His head was spinning, his eyes were blurry, but Carson still saw the moment Nancy tried to get up, her hand reaching out pleadingly to the monster.

"Odette, _stop!_ " she yelled brokenly, shaking her head. "Please, please stop. I love them! Please, don't hurt them. Can't you remember love? Your girlfriend, remember her! You loved her, didn't you? And she loved the beach and the sea! Remember that?"

All of Nancy's friends played along with whatever she was doing, telling stories to the monster about two young girls that loved each other very much. It didn't seem like a very good plan, because it only made the monster's screams get louder and louder, and it was reaching a point where Carson couldn't even truly hear what Nancy and the others were saying any more.

And then, suddenly, the screaming stopped, and the monster—Odette, was that its name?—disappeared in a puddle of water.

Carson made his way to Nancy, dragged himself to her side, at the same time Ryan did.

"Nancy?" he asked, his voice rough and his ears ringing. "Are you—are you okay?"

She barely managed to nod, to look at either of them, before the monster reappeared from its puddle.

Only—

Only it wasn't a monster any longer. It was a girl, a young girl, not much older than Nancy and her friends. She looked… scared, alone.

"Odette," Nancy said again, and the young woman turned to look at her. " _Odette._ You're more than what they did to you. You… you were loved."

As she said it, though, Carson knew that Nancy wasn't just addressing the… ghost, possibly. She was squeezing his hand, and upon a quick glance downward, he saw that she was squeezing Ryan's as well.

Once again, the others joined her, and it seemed to appease the spirit this time. In a blinding flash of light, it disappeared again, though not before sending them again flying back.

The first thing Carson noticed when he opened his eyes again was that, aside from the strange amount of what he imagined was seawater covering the floor and how the furniture was strewn all over the place, things seemed fine now. The thing, whether it was a girl or a monster, was gone.

The second thing he noticed was that someone was screaming. Again.

This time, though, it sounded like a human scream. It sounded like—

Carson turned his head a bit, and found that Ryan was the source of the screams.

Ryan, who was close to one of the walls, and had blood covering his hands and even splashed on his face.

Ryan, who was still holding onto Nancy tightly.

 _Nancy_ , who was the source of the blood, who had been—been impaled in the chest by what looked like a decorative harpoon.

Carson couldn't think.

He couldn't process what he was seeing.

It wasn't until Bess joined the screaming, terrified beyond anything he had ever seen, that Carson sprung into motion.

He blinked, and then he was by Nancy's side, and her friends were yelling at each other in the background about towels.

Nancy was—

She was—

It couldn't be possible.

"Nancy, listen to me," Ryan started saying as soon as he stopped screaming. "Nancy, _listen_. I won't let go. I won't let you go. Please hold on. Hold on, okay? Just hold on."

"Nancy, baby, don't do this," Carson whispered to her, but his tears were already flowing freely down his cheeks. He had been with Kate when she died, had known what it was like when death was close. And Nancy, oh, his sweet daughter looked just like Kate had.

His heart shattered into a million pieces—if it was even possible for a broken heart to break yet again—when Nancy's head gently turned to the side and she forced a smile upon seeing him.

One of her bloody hands went up, and she touched his cheek delicately.

"Dad," Nancy whispered, coughed along with the blood that wouldn't stop flowing past her lips.

Then her head rolled to the side again, slower this time, and her other hand went to Ryan's face.

"Dad," Nancy repeated, using the very last bit of her strength to tell them she loved both the only way she still could.

And that was it.

Just like that, after another coughing fit, Nancy was gone.

Just like it had happened with Kate.

Just like it had happened with Lucy.

One second she was there, and the next she was not.

"Nancy?" Ryan asked, his voice rough and broken and Carson really couldn't handle this. "Nancy, come on. Don't do this. Come on!"

From the corner of his eye, Carson saw Bess gasping and George stumbling backward in shock.

He couldn't breathe.

He couldn't—

This couldn't be happening.

He didn't even realize he was now wailing, screaming at the top of his lungs everything that was going through his mind.

And then, when his voice gave away and there were only tears left, he hugged Nancy close, unaware and uncaring about how much time he spent that way.

His focus on his grief was only broken when Ryan finally let go of Nancy, _of their daughter_ , and started moving away.

"What— _Where_ are you going? You can't leave her! You told her you wouldn't leave her!"

The accusations he was ready to fire all died down in his throat however, when Carson realized that Ryan had _that_ look in his eyes. That hallowed, haunted, empty look he remembered seeing on Lucy's eyes right before she took the plunge and disappeared underwater.

He—he couldn't deal with this. It was too much.

He couldn't deal with this _again_ , not right now, especially right now.

"Ryan, listen, I—Kate and I, for a little while, we cared for Lucy like she was our own," Carson started then, his voice desperate, his entire being desperate for Ryan to just understand. "And then there was Nancy, and she _was_ our own too. But—but there's you now, too, and you can't… you can't be considering this! You can't be—be so _dumb!_ I can't do this again. I can't. Please don't make me do this again. I don't want to be alone."

For as emotional as his speech was, for as much as it hurt him to say it, it was all in vain.

Because Ryan still jumped to his feet and bolted through the door, not looking back once.

* * *

His anger, his sorrow, his _grief_ , it was all so big and overwhelming that Ryan couldn't see more than two feet ahead of him. He moved, he drove, he knew exactly where he was going, but he wasn't focusing on any of it.

Pain, it was so all-consuming, that it demanded all of his focus.

And pain attracted more pain, it seemed, because Ryan could _feel_ Lucy there, somewhere near him. Her own pain, her own rage was just as overwhelming as his was, and he almost couldn't breathe. He would have given anything to have another moment with Lucy, but not like this, not right now.

If Ryan focused hard enough, he would be able to feel not just Lucy, but something else too, someone else. The part of his brain that hadn't short circuited yet strongly believed that it was Nancy's other mom, Kate, attracted to this hell like Lucy had been.

_A shroud that can revive the dead._

_A shroud that can revive the dead._

_A shroud that can revive the dead._

The words that had been on repeat in his mind the entire day were painful, loud yells now, and Ryan couldn't ignore them.

Before, the idea of using it had been something that he considered to do to bring his family, his real family, back together.

Now, the idea of using it was the only thing keeping him from swerving off the road somewhere so he could join Lucy and Nancy at last.

It was a tempting thought, truly.

 _If this doesn't work_ , Ryan promised himself, _at least he would have a way out. A plan b._

But then he remembered Carson's words to him, something he imagined a father would say, and he had to reconsider his choices. It was strange, so strange to hear such words from Carson. They were learning how to be co-parents, maybe, but not this. Ryan wasn't ready for this. He wasn't ready for so many people to suddenly care about him.

 _No_ , his brain reminded him. _Carson was the only one who still cared. Because Nancy was dead. Nancy was gone. And she would stay dead unless he did something about it._

Ryan drove as fast as he could, trying to focus only on the words, _a shroud that can revive the dead._

It had to work.

It _had to._

He didn't remember arriving at the Historical Society.

He didn't remember how exactly he found where the book of records was kept.

He didn't remember what he yelled at the caretaker.

He didn't remember how he even got the damn shroud.

He didn't remember driving back to The Claw.

All Ryan knew was that, one moment he was planning the best way to crash his car, the next he promised himself he would bring Nancy back, and the next he was somehow back at The Claw, gently covering his daughter with the white, embroidered shroud.

It was tinted with red now, both from his hands and from Nancy's body, but that didn't matter. The shroud wasn't supposed to look pretty. It was supposed to do its thing and bring his daughter back to life.

After long, long seconds where nothing happened, Ryan couldn't hold back his sobs.

"I'm so sorry, Lucy," he whispered, holding Nancy's body close. "I'm so sorry, Kate. I'm so, so, so sorry."

Carson had an arm over his shoulders and the other wrapped around Nancy, and Ryan simply didn't care about anything any longer. It was all over.

Everything.

It was over for him now.

And then, just as he was getting ready to jump back on his feet and get back to his car to get it over with, Nancy gasped.

She— _gasped._

"Nancy?" Carson asked, his voice filled with confusion and hope and so many other emotions, Ryan couldn't even tell them apart at this point. He was sure, however, that he was feeling every single one of them.

"What the—" Nancy started, and then coughed. This time, though, there was no blood coming from her mouth. "How? What did you do?" And then her eyes fell upon the shroud covering her body, and her mouth hung open.

"It doesn't matter, Nancy, it doesn't matter," Carson was saying, hugging Nancy fiercely. "You're alive, you're okay, you're—"

He couldn't seem to finish his sentences, but it didn't look like it mattered to her.

Nancy hugged him back just as fiercely, just as tightly, and then her eyes found Ryan's and somehow he got pulled into the hug as well.

It didn't take long after that for her friends to decide to join in, and then everyone was suddenly on the dirty floor in a very strange hug pile.

Ryan didn't mind one bit.

* * *

Later, much later, when he was sure Nancy was okay, truly okay, Ryan would start looking at the contents of the flash drive Nick had given him.

And while he did that, he would steal a few passing glances at where he had hidden the shroud in his bedroom.

 _Soon_ , he told himself. _He would ask Lucy soon. He just had to make sure the world was a safe place first._

**Author's Note:**

> The real question here is: are they co-dads or does Carson have two children now?


End file.
